


Yippee Ki Yay, Father Christmas

by cyren2132



Category: Everwood
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Road Trips, Thoughts of Colin, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 05:50:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5445572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyren2132/pseuds/cyren2132
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Manning Santa's Workshop with Bright wasn't exactly what Ephram expected it to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Show's The Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/gifts).



> Written for Ashura, who wanted "Boys being boys... Bright and Ephram doing the stupid things that Bright and Ephram do" in the Yuletide 2015 Challenge.

Ephram looked down at his shoe in disdain. Shoe wasn’t really the right word. Slipper didn’t even cover it. Abomination against all mankind was getting warmer, but he was running out of time to contemplate. With a sigh, he jammed his toes into the hole and and set his foot down on the tiled floor. Little bells jingled happily.  
  
“Dude, what’s taking so long?” Bright called from his spot in front of a mirror in the tiny bathroom that could charitably be considered a converted broom closet.  
  
“Sorry,” Ephram said as he put on the other shoe. It stuck. “I’m having trouble with these stupid shoes.” He gave the heel a tug with a grunt until it popped onto his foot, causing his elbow to slam into the wall of the small stall.  
  
“Ow.”  
  
“Don’t be so negative,” Bright said. “This is awesome.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s awesome for you, because you get to be Santa, and I have to be this,” Ephram said as he unlocked the door and stepped out into the small space, jingling all the way.

Bright turned to face him, and couldn’t hide the laugh he tried to stifle as Ephram appeared in candy cane-striped stockings, green shorts, honest to god lederhosen and a not quite Peter Pan hat.

“Yeah, laugh it up, Santa,” Ephram said as he adjusted the strap on his shoulder.

“Don’t forget your rosy red cheeks,” Bright said with a laugh as he held out a jar of makeup.

“I just got these stupid gloves on,” Ephram said. “Unless you want this to look like an entirely different kind of night, maybe we skip the face paint.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Bright said as he unscrewed the cap and grabbed a brush. “I’ll do it.”

“Fine whatever,” Ephram said. Bright dipped the brush in the paint and carefully drew a circle on Ephram’s cheek and then filled it in with easy strokes before moving to the next. The whole time, his eyebrows furrowed together in concentration.

“You know, I think you missed your calling as a theater geek,” Ephram said.

“Shut up. And don’t move.”

Bright finished with the makeup and turned to the mirror.

“There!” he said. “We look awesome!”

“You look awesome, I look like an idiot. Remind me again why we’re doing this?”

“Because it’s Christmas! Don’t you remember being a kid and going to see Santa? It’s like the best part.”

“Okay, one, you do know what role you’re playing here, right? You’re being Santa, not going to see Santa. And two, I’m Jewish!”

“Aw, come on. Only like half.”

“Really not how it works.”

“Okay, look at this way, the school’s always threatening to add community service to graduation requirements, so we’re just getting it out of the way before they can.”

Ephram had a rebuttal all prepared — schools can’t just foist new rules on a graduating class; they’d have to start with a freshman class, for one — but a sharp knock on the door drew his attention from the conversation.

“Hey, Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum” a girl’s voice called through the door. “You ladies about done in there?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re coming,” Bright answered as he picked his hat off the counter and positioned it on his head.

“Would you just admit that you’re only doing this because Lisa is your Mrs. Claus?” Ephram hissed.

Bright turned around, his eyes widening beneath the bushy beard.

“Wait, what? I thought it was Kelly?”

“Dude, she dropped a week ago.”

“Ohhh, this is not good.”

They opened the door and and stepped into the hall. A young woman whose shape and style was masked by a frumpy dress and apron, bonnet and gold-rimmed glasses punched Bright in the arm.

“’Bout time, Abbott.”

“Lisa!” Bright said, plastering on a giant grin. “How’ve you been?”

“I look like an idiot, and you’re in my way. Elf,” she said to Ephram with a nod as she pushed past them and into the bathroom.

“It’s Ephram,” he called after her as the door closed shut. “I like her,” Ephram said as they carried on down the hallway. Bright rubbed at his arm.

“You would.”

When they rounded a corner and stepped through a set of double doors, even Ephram had to marvel at the transition. What had been a dank hospital basement had been transformed. Fake snow lined the hallway, as if the cement floor had just been shoveled after a snowfall, and a few giant plastic candy canes stuck out of them, like flowers. Christmas decorations and lights hung on the walls and surrounded the next set of doors before them. A wooden sign identified it as Santa’s Workshop.  
  
The inside was even more detailed. Bright pathways were set up to send people to the left toward Santa’s quarters, to the right for the workshop or straight ahead to the sleigh and and Santa chair. Shelves were everywhere — someone had even donated a library shelf complete with ladder for the event, and on each shelf were a multitude of boxes wrapped in festive Christmas wrapping. The crown jewel of the workshop though was a conveyor belt. It was mostly made of cardboard big enough to hide two people: One who pedaled some jerry-rigged bike  to make the belt move, sending unwrapped wooden horses, cars and dolls into its mouth, and another to swap the item with a wrapped box — as if the machine itself were doing the wrapping.

Ephram was glad he hadn’t drawn either of those assignments. As embarrassing as it was, he’d trade candy cane tights and lederhosen over being crammed in a cardboard box for hours.

The path to Santa’s quarters passed through a facade building front into a fake kitchen with a big round table. Cookies sat in an “oven” ready to be handed out with bottles of milk to children who wanted to crowd around the table and listen to Santa and Mrs. Claus’s stories. Heading out the back door of the “house” was Santa’s throne and sleigh, and one more door to the reindeer stalls. All conveniently empty but dressed to the nines.  
  
Bright had started harassing Ephram in October to work at the workshop. If anything, he’d agreed just to shut Bright up about it. He couldn’t figure out why Bright was so invested in it. Sure, it was a charity event for sick and poor kids, but to drive all the way out to Denver multiple times a year every year to spend his Christmas Eve Eve crammed in a cardboard box, pretending to assemble wooden toys or guiding kids through the tour, didn’t exactly seem like the Bright Abbott Ephram was familiar with. But there was no denying it was a good cause, and Bright was super crazy excited about it, so Ephram agreed.  
  
Also, to shut him up.  
  
As soon as the doors into the workshop swung open, Bright let out a hefty “Ho! Ho! Ho!” trailing off the last word as the group of teens and parent supervisors stared at him.  
  
“Come on guys!” he said. “Where’s your Christmas spirit?” Blank expressions stared back at him.  
  
“Yippee Ki Yay, Father Christmas,” Ephram said as he clapped Bright on the shoulder and moved forward. The phrase drew a laugh from the crowd — Bright included — and everybody got back to work setting up for the event.   
  
The first group of kids arrived 30 minutes later. Lloyd, an older man in his 60s greeted them at the door. With a costume somewhere between Bright’s Santa suit and Ephram’s elf, he was clearly designated as the right-hand man of Santa’s operation.  
  
“All right children, gather round, gather round,” Lloyd said as he pulled all the children closer. “I’m Neville, the head elf, this here is my assistant Bartholomew!” He motioned Ephram forward and put his hand around his shoulders. “Bartholomew is new, so let’s all give him a warm welcome!”  
  
“Hello, Bartholomew!” a chorus of tiny voices rang out.  
  
“Hi,” Ephram muttered with a quick wave.  
  
“Oh, ho ho ho, you all can do better than that!” Bright yelled, stepping out from around a large Christmas tree. The kids immediately  busted out in whispered gasps and giggles and greetings for Santa Claus. “Let’s try it again!”  
  
“HELLO, BARTHOLOMEW!!” the children yelled. Ephram was surprised at how heartwarming the yell was and immediately burst into a smile.  
  
“Hi guys!” he said.  
  
“So, what do we have going on today?”  
  
As Lloyd explained the tour to Santa, the kids and their parents, Ephram soaked everything in. He’d helped build it out of cardboard, donations and dollar store finds, so there hadn’t been a lot of magic in it for him until now.  
  
Now, in this whole moment that was so entirely off script that Ephram could practically see Lisa glaring through the window of Santa’s cottage, he couldn’t deny the perfectness of it. In fact, under the bright lights and festive decor — and a lightly padded belly and not wholly unrealistic beard — he could almost buy Bright as a Santa that had gone through a fountain of youth.  
  
“So let’s get started, shall we?” Lloyd said, and Ephram snapped back to attention. The sound of reindeer hooves and bells played over the loudspeaker — the universal “get Santa out of here” signal they’d all worked out to defuse situations involving angry parents, bratty kids or other unpleasantness.  
  
“Uh oh,” sounds like I’ve got reindeer to check on,” Bright said. “Guys have fun on the tour, and I’ll see you at the end!” He waggled his fingers at the kids and a series of “Bye, Santas” rang out.  
  
As Bright wandered out of sight, Lloyd began the tour again. It started with a long plastic folding table where a few other elves assembled small wooden cars. It really wasn’t much more than twisting a few wheels on premade bodies and axles but it looked impressive as an assembly line, with an elf for each wheel, ending with a fourth who gave the car a nice buff with a rag before setting it on a train that looped the room. The next table did similar things with dolls — one person was a dedicated hair brusher — and another stuck wheels on a toy plane — ending with a test spin of tiny little propellers.  
  
The children were excited — full of “oohs and aaaahs” — and when they got to the back of the room, they saw The Box.  
  
“And this is our crown jewel,” Lloyd said. “The new Wrap-o-Matic 3000!” A recording provided sound effects of bells and whistles as the “machine” chugged along. “As you can see, the Wrap-O-Matic 3000 will box and wrap any gift we send through. It saves a bunch of time for all our elves here at Santa’s shop.”

“And our fingers, too” Ephram chimed in, holding one finger in the air. “Fewer paper cuts.” The quip got a few chuckles as kids craned their necks over the rope separating the path they were on from all the displays people were working on — or in, in the case of the Wrap-o-Matic 3000.  
  
“All right, young sirs and misses” Lloyd said. “Time to move on. I believe Mrs. Claus has a treat for you in the cottage, and Bartholomew here has work to do, don’t you young man?”  
  
Ephram said his goodbyes and joined David, one of the other elves, in pulling completed toys from the trains and lining them up in front of the Wrap-O-Matic 3000. Once the kids were out of sight, safely in the cottage, work around the workshop stopped. Mike and Clarissa, the two people in the wrap-o-matic stumbled out an end, wiping sweat from their brows.  
  
Mike waved a hand in Ephram’s direction.  
  
“Next time,” he said between breaths, “the new guy rides the bike.” Ephram felt bad for a moment, but Mike’s tired expression soon turned to a grin.  
“Just messin’ with you,” as they all collected the unwrapped toys and returned them to the front of the assembly line - pulling wheels as the walked.  
  
Three more groups of children made their way through the workshop that night. Bright didn’t always emerge from behind the tree like he had with the first group, but periodically Ephram was able to sneak over to the cottage and watch as he appeared during milk and cookies with Mrs. Claus — who seemed far more pleasant and cheery than he’d ever seen Lisa since planning started for the event. And each time, Bright burst into the room, full of enthusiasm and joy that was infectious and made Ephram glad he’d agreed to take part. And Bright was funny, and quicker on his feet than Ephram would have ever guessed.  
  
Because, while he had a prepared speech that he was supposed to get through about nice and naughty lists and fitting through chimneys and whatever else anyone thought would be interesting to little kids, Ephram soon realized that there would always be interruptions.  
  
Like the kid who wanted to see the reindeer and wanted to know why they couldn’t, when the door to the stables was clearly right there.  
  
“They’re out practicing,” Bright answered. “And boy, does Blitzen need it. Poor guy can’t fly in a straight line to save his soul. And you should see him try to touch his nose.” The line drew laughs from everybody, even parents amused by the allusion to a blitzed reindeer.  
  
It was times like that when Ephram thought maybe he hadn’t been that far off when he said Bright had missed his calling.  
  
Ephram watched from the window and as soon as the last child in group three finished their cookie, he signaled to the people in the Wrap-o-Matic 3000. Then he pushed his hat askew and took a few deep breaths before bursting into the cottage.  
  
“Santa! Santa!” he yelled. All eyes turned to him. “There’s something wrong with the Wrap-o-Matic 3000! You better come quick!” He was much more animated than he had been during the first group, when he’d entered the room like an assistant trying not to break up an important meeting, and he could thank Bright for that, who caught him between groups once and told him to amp it up.  
  
Bright turned wide-eyed to the kids. “Let’s go look!” he said as they all rose from their seats and rushed out the door. When they reached the workshop, wrapped gifts were flying from the Wrap-o-matic 3000 as various other elves tried to catch them. The ones they missed were scattered about the floor.  
  
“Somebody pull the plug!” Lloyd cried, and Ephram ran for the extension cord that was plugged into the wall and trailing behind the cardboard machine. He gave it a tug, and the conveyor belt stopped moving -- because Clarissa had stopped throwing them and Andrew had stopped pedaling like he was trying to win a race.  
  
“It’s a mess,” Ephram said dejectedly as he stepped over the blue-wrapped boxes with silver ribbon and back to Bright’s side.  
  
“Oh, come on, Barty”  
  
“Bartholomew.”  
  
“It’s nothing a little Santa magic can’t fix.” Bright gave a wink as he turned to the children. Bringing one finger to his nose, he wiggled his ears and crinkled his eyes…and then the lights went out. There were a few red bulbs overhead illuminating the pathway, but everything beyond the rope that separated the children from the workshop was in darkness.  
  
“Nice magic there, Santa,” Ephram said.  
  
“No problem,” Bright said. “Santa’s got it all worked out.” He followed the red lit path to a wall with a comically large and improbably colored power switch attached to another cardboard wall. He tugged it upward with a “ho ho ho” and the rest of the lights came back on — bathing the room in brightness and revealing all the boxes that had come flying from the machine now neatly stacked atop a table. The children gasped their amazement.  
  
“I told you all it needed was a little magic,” Bright said as he walked back to the group and inspected the table. He picked up one gift. He turned it over in his hands, and furrowed his brow. “Hold on,” he said. “Is there a Bethany here?” One little girl in pig tails raised her hand.  
  
“That’s me, Santa, that’s me!” she exclaimed.  
  
“Well, then I think this for you!” In fact, every child had a gift on the table, and one more in the back room, to be surreptitiously handed to a parent as they left.  
  
After the gifts — little more than party favors, really — were handed out, all of the children lined up for what they'd really come for: A one-on-one sit-down with Santa himself.  
  
Four groups of kids and as many hours in, Ephram still couldn’t quite believe how well Bright worked with them. Maybe it’s because he was kind of a big kid himself or maybe it was something else, but he made every kid that sat on his knee feel like they were the only ones in the room.  
  
For some, he mirrored their enthusiasm and happiness as they listed off the things they wanted for Christmas, sometimes joking with them about whether younger siblings would agree they belonged on the nice list. But not all the kids were overly happy and brimming with ideas for toys or games or ponies that they wanted for Christmas. Some wanted jobs for their parents or for a sick relative to get well, and the first time it happened, Ephram was sure he’d hear the reindeer hooves pop up over the loud speaker. But they never came, and Bright offered a sympathetic ear to those children. Stopping short of promising jobs and health, he offered hope and happiness, and each kid left with a smile, even if it was framed by dried tears.  
  
And then it was over. The last of the children were shepherded off Santa’s lap with a candy cane and a picture and a promise of something under their trees on Christmas morning, and the organizers of the event came out to congratulate them all on another Christmas well-served for Denver’s least fortunate. They brought with them pizza and root beer and more cookies than they could shake a stick at, and all the youth from Everwood enjoyed a little party through workshop before tearing it all down and carefully packing it away for next year. Even Lisa seemed to have overcome her animosity and laughed with Bright — joining him in a quick jitterbuggy dance while pulling lights from the tree.  
  
If it had taken days to get everything set up and planned just so, it only took a few hours to get it all tore down. But they were still hours that ended late into the night, and by the time the workshop was struck, pizza eaten and goodbyes said, it was pushing 11 p.m.  
  
Fortunately for Bright and Ephram, Dr. Abbott planned for that and supplied Bright with a credit card — for a hotel and emergencies only, he’d specified — and the two of them had procured a room at a hotel just off the highway. Ephram actually had a lot of questions he wanted to ask Bright, but by the time they got back to their room and got into their nightly routines, both were too tired to do much but collapse into their beds and sleep.


	2. Snowed In

The next morning they awoke to Bright’s buzzing phone.   
  
“Hello?” Bright answered, his voice thick with sleep. “It’s what? So? How bad can it be?” Ephram was getting irritated only hearing half the conversation, but then downright curious when Bright threw back his blankets and stood up, flipping on the light.  
  
“What’s going on?” Ephram asked. He looked at the small clock on the nightstand. The green numbers spelled out 7:03 a.m. Way, way too early.  
Bright marched to door and whipped it open. A frigid blast of air slammed into Ephram, penetrating his sheet, blanket and comforter like an arrow through tissue paper.   
  
Suddenly, he was awake.  
  
Bright exclaimed and slammed the door shut, but not before the blowing wind had left a thin dusting of a snow on the burgundy carpet.  
  
“Yeah,” Bright said into the phone. “We’ll stay. Thanks, Dad.”  He hung up the phone and turned to Ephram. A few snow flakes clung to his blond curls as he dusted himself off. “It’s snowing.” High-stepping on his toes through the snow on the floor, he leapt into his own bed and burrowed into the bedding with a shiver, with just his face poking out from the blankets wrapped around his head.  
  
“I can see that,” Ephram said with a smile. “Cold?”  
  
“Well, it’s snow, so yeah.” He situated further, and Ephram could tell he was curling his legs up around him. “It’s gonna be crazy all day — storm came out of nowhere even though it was supposed to be clear-”  
  
“Imagine my shock at weathermen getting something wrong.”  
  
“They’re not psychic, Ephram.”  
  
“Sorry, didn’t realize you harbored a secret love for meteorologists. Learning all kinds of things about you this trip.”  
  
“Anyway,” Bright continued, “It’s only supposed to be like this today. My dad thinks CODOT should have the roads clear by tomorrow morning, and we should just stay another night.”  
  
“But tomorrow’s Christmas.”  
  
“I thought you were Jewish.”  
  
“Yeah but my dad’s-”   
  
Bright’s grinned at him from beneath the blankets, and Ephram picked up one of his pillows and tossed it at Bright’s face. The action turned into a full blown pillow fight that crossed both beds, the divide between them, at one point was atop the small table and stuffed chair and even carried into the bathroom before a pounding resonated through the wall next to them, freezing them in their tracks.  
  
“Uh, sorry!” Bright called out. “Merry Christmas Eve,” he finished before the two of them divulged into a fit of chittering giggles. Ephram checked the clock again. It was 7:15, and his stomach gurgled hungrily. It didn’t go unnoticed.  
  
“Wanna hit up the free breakfast?”  
  
“Dude. We just got up,” Ephram said. “We’re in our underwear, haven’t showered, and your hair…I don’t actually know what your hair is doing, but it’s not natural, let alone fit for the public eye.  
  
“Geez, Brown, it’s a hotel by the highway, not the Ritz,” Bright said as he pulled a pair of sweatpants over his boxers and patted down his hair. “They’re used to it.”  
  
And so they made their way to the lobby, where they partook of self-serve  waffles, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage — even a biscuit and gravy for Bright’s carb-loving self — and an array of juice. Afterward, they stopped by the front desk and extended their stay an extra day. The morning manager scoffed at them until Bright produced his father’s credit card.  
  
Afterward they returned to their room. They watched hours of television and even did a little homework at Ephram’s insistence. It was only after they had exhausted everything they could do in a small hotel room, rejected the idea of frolicking through two feet of still-falling snow and consumed an entire pizza that they lapsed into silence, each on their own bed, staring up at the popcorn ceiling. For a while, Ephram occupied himself trying to count the nubs and protrusions of the ceiling but soon grew bored. He glanced over to Bright, who was leaning against the headboard, eyes closed, seemingly deep in thought.  
  
“Hey,” Ephram said. Bright opened one eye and looked his way.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“What’s up with you and Lisa?”  
  
“What about Lisa?”  
  
“Why does she hate you so much half the time?”  
  
Bright turned over on his side so he was facing Ephram.  
  
“A couple years ago, I was in the Wrap-O-Matic 3000 as the gift-swapper” he said sleepily. “When it was supposed to be going haywire, she was one of the elves meant to catch all the presents. So, things were going crazy, and I heaved a box out the opening and his hit her right in the face. She had a black eye in all her Christmas photos that year.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“No,” Bright admitted. “No, but me and Lisa…it’s complicated. I don’t think she hates me though.”  
  
Ephram nodded. He didn’t exactly understand the situation, but he understood complicated. It was getting late, and Ephram could feel sleep heading their way. But the casualness of the moment brought another question to his lips.  
  
“How’d you get started doing this?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Well, it doesn’t exactly sound like the sort of thing the captain of the football and basketball teams and general jock king of the school would want to do.”  
Bright smiled, just a little, as he let thoughts wash over him, waiting to pick out just the right ones.  
  
“Colin,” he said. “It was Colin’s thing way before I got into it,” he said. “But he drug me to it once…god, we must have been 13, maybe.” He smiled at the wistful memory. “At first I thought it’d be lame, but just being there and building something with all these people felt really good. And watching Colin with the little kids…I’d never really seen anyone our age care so much about something outside themselves, you know? I don’t know it just…it was nice.”  
  
“Did you guys do it every year?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bright paused, almost interrupting himself. “Every year but the last two. When Colin was in the coma, I just. I couldn’t. And then when he woke up, he didn’t remember it, he didn’t want to do it, and the idea of it just wasn’t the same, you know?”  
  
“Yeah, I get it,” Ephram said. He thought over the evening and about what it must have been like for Bright, trying to recapture something that seemed so lost and inviting Ephram into this special thing that was a tradition with his best childhood friend. “Thanks,” he said.  
  
“For what?”  
  
“For letting me be part of it.”   
  
Bright nodded and rolled back over onto his back, placing his arms behind his head. Ephram glanced at the clock just in time to see the numbers turn from 11:59 to 12 a.m.  
  
“Merry Christmas, Bright”  
  
“Merry Christmas, Ephram.”


End file.
